I guess that's a very common experience for new players here. A lot depends on your luck with joining a Captain & Crew that actually know what they're doing. I've had enemy Captains today that would just run their ship countless times against cliffs, and supposedly you experienced the same already as a crewmember.
Your best bet in the beginning is looking for a Ship with experienced people on, something about Level 4 upwards, and you're especially lucky if those people talk in the lobby chat - either by text or voice. If you signal a experienced Captain that you're willing to learn and can talk with either microphone or text chat, you'll be received as a blessing and declared the saint of all the skysailors. People willing to learn and people willing to talk are extremely difficult to come by.
With reading tutorials and watching tutorials you've already made bigger steps forward than a good part of the people flying around in the lobby, as sad as this is to say
Next time you're online, just state in the Lobby channel, with J, that you're new around here, willing to play either engineer or gunner, and wanting to learn. By now we've got a good base of people who are willing to help out, so chances are someone will contact you!
I also expect that you'll get a lot more replies here, all offering to teach you ingame, and you should make best of use of that! If you see me ingame, by the name Kyren, I've usually got one spot on my ship free and are always happy to take in new players!
In any case, I see the problems with your ships exploding around you as soon as you join in a lack of crew coordination. If things are in such a dire state when you join, you could expect the Captain or someone else to call specific parts to repair!
Lastly, have a late but still honest and friendly welcome to Guns of Icarus Online! I suppose things will go a lot better for you now that you've joined the forum community, you'll soon have a lot of crewing requests and guild offers.
